Never on Sunday Never More! (celebrating the discarding of an Indiana blue law)

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Two musical stars with long-range buzz share the spotlight in Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's classical season finale

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Joshua Bell builds on his legacy. For a composer who was quickly and permanently lionized by his countrymen, Jean Sibelius carried a nagging sense of failure throughout his long life. In his Violin Concerto — the centerpiece of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra 's Classical Series finale this weekend — the focus of his shortcomings is palpable regret about not being a violin virtuoso. Many commentators have pointed this out, as well as calling attention to the odd manner in which Sibelius manipulated the work's premiere, almost ensuring a debut marred by a journeyman fiddler's performance. Masters of the violin have taken the piece up over the past century, however, up through such performances as the one Joshua Bell offered Friday night at Hilbert Circle Theatre. The Bloomington native dependably blended vulnerability and bravado in his interpretation. At 46, Bell has balanced those qualities so enchantingly that he could be called the Frank Sinatra of the violi
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The Indianapolis Jazz Collective pays sizzling tribute to the master drummer/bandleader Art Blakey

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Art Blakey said many good things, but among them was not "Music washes away the dust of everyday life." Yet a concert in centennial tribute to the drummer-bandleader Friday night at the Jazz Kitchen accomplished The Indianapolis Jazz Collective played an Art Blakey tribute show to a packed house. such a cleansing for me and the capacity audience, swelled by supporters of the sponsoring Indianapolis Jazz Foundation. The misattribution of the original thought of Berthold Auerbach, a 19th-century German writer, sometimes sticks "from the soul" in the middle of that quotation, as usually translated. Blakey would have endorsed the complete version, too, and the band led by Rob Dixon put substance behind it in a generously proportioned first set. (The Auerbach quote has great legs, having been attributed to Pablo Picasso as well — and even, thanks to appropriation of the writer's last name, to the immortal Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach. Can't you jus
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Augusta Read Thomas: A rare focus on a living composer's new music highlights this season

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Twice this season the composer Augusta Read Thomas has come down from Chicago to hear new Two major works by Augusta Read Thomas have been heard this season here. works performed at Hilbert Circle Theatre.  This weekend it's the turn of "Toward a Secret Sky," a cantata commissioned by the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir, which is giving the premiere in two performances, along with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra . The second is at 5:30 p.m. today. The ISO in February gave the local premiere of her piece titled "Sun Dance," co-commissioned with other orchestras. Indianapolis audiences have thus had ample opportunity to become familiar with Thomas' bright, detailed, sometimes ecstatic manner of composition for large forces. In "Toward a Secret Sky," using texts from the medieval Sufi poet Rumi, Thomas has come up with musical settings, in nine movements without interruption, that strive to capture a spirituality reassuring everyone of its permanent,
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